


Stand By Me, For Me, With Me

by shooponthemoon



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Prompt Fic, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:59:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3149792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shooponthemoon/pseuds/shooponthemoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Have you seen Erejean's prosthetic AU?<br/>A look back at an event that changed both of their lives, and a glimpse at life now that things have settled down a bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stand By Me, For Me, With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the prompt! I hope I didn't butcher it blerrrgh, I've been writing for like 7 days straight so I don't even know anymore... what is grammar... how to do verb tenses... why titles whyyy... words words words
> 
> WARNING: This fic mentions a car accident resulting in severe injuries (but no character deaths). Please be careful if this topic is triggering for you.

They had been at school when they had heard the news. That wintery Thursday morning, their entire grade had suddenly been called to the gym for assembly, and they had sat together in groups, whispering confusedly as they had tried to figure out what was going on.

Jean remembered it quite clearly. He had been with Connie and Sasha at the time, the two laughing at some dumb joke Connie had said, but Jean had been busy searching the gym for a glimpse of his boyfriend. He hadn’t fret too terribly much when he hadn’t seen him, however, knowing the guy tended to sleep past his alarm most mornings and was frequently late for class. But what had been surprising, and slightly unsettling, was that Jean had also spotted neither his boyfriend’s sister nor best friend. Thinking back, that alone should have been enough to set off the alarm bells in his mind.

When they had finally been called to order, the news had been swiftly and mercilessly delivered: a car accident, involving two of the students in their grade. Jean’s eyes had frantically swept the gym, looking for his missing friends as his mind chanted: _Not Eren not Armin not Mikasa oh please not Eren!_

But the universe clearly had thought it owed Jean no favours, as his boyfriend’s name, followed by Armin’s, had been calmly read off of a paper by their vice-principal, who had looked entirely too composed to be talking about such a serious matter. Their grade was excused for classes for the rest of the day and the next in case they needed to take time to be alone or to talk to the school’s counselor.

Jean had gone home, his mind a complete blank. He had wanted to head to the hospital, but his friends has been in surgery, both in critical condition as it had still been unclear whether either of them would survive.

A week later, most of it spent over at his boyfriend’s house trying to help Mikasa console her hysterical mother, they had finally received the good news: both of the boys would live.

By then Jean had heard the story of what had happened: Armin had slipped on a patch of black ice, falling into the road just as a truck had been speeding down the hill towards him. Eren had stepped in and tried to push him away, but he didn’t succeed and in the end had taken the brunt of the impact of the collision.

They had been allowed to visit Armin first; most of his injuries had been to his head, but he had woken up from the last surgery with his mind and memories completely intact, so the doctors hadn’t been too worried about him. His broken arm had been an inconvenience, but it had healed in time.

Eren had been a different matter. The doctor’s verdict had almost broken his mother, and Jean was glad Eren’s father had been there to help keep her from completely falling apart. They and Mikasa had gone in to visit first, without Jean, and it was only hours later, after they’d left, that he’d been allowed to enter the room.

Eren had lost his left leg. The doctors had been unable to save it due to the amount of damage it had received, and they had amputated it just below the knee. His other leg and left arm had also been in casts, but regardless of how well those would heal, Eren would never walk again, not as he had before.

Both Eren and Jean had never been too good at communication, meaning their relationship had already gone through a few rough patches. But when Eren had seen Jean standing in his doorway, he had reached out to him, wanting nothing more at that moment than his boyfriend’s comforting embrace.

During Eren’s recovery over the next few months, Jean had become his rock. He’d been there for every important meeting with Eren’s doctors, had taken him to every physiotherapy session, and had taken both he and Armin to their trauma counselling sessions.

Some days Jean had felt as if he was just a chauffeur, but when they were alone Eren would hold him, caress him so sweetly as they exchanged gentle kisses, and Jean knew deep down that he truly was loved and appreciated.

It took a while, but Eren had grown used to moving around without his leg. Now that they were finishing university, living in an off-campus apartment together, things were going great between the two of them. Jean was an assistant professor, soon to be full-time professor, in the French department, and Eren was finishing his master’s in biomedical engineering.

Jean would wake up first most mornings, taking a few moments to admire his boyfriend’s tanned back before chasing away his dirty thoughts and going to start a pot of coffee. Eren would eventually crawl out of bed, hopping down the hall to the bathroom and then over to the kitchen.

His natural agility meant that he’d easily adapted to standing on one leg with near-perfect balance. That all went to shit any time he got drunk, however, and evenings out at a bar usually ended with Jean carrying an armful of drunk boyfriend back home bridal-style.

Outside of their apartment, Eren used a pair of forearm crutches to help himself get around, and by now the university’s students were quite used to seeing him barrelling down the paths around campus, yelling greetings as he passed by friends and colleagues.

Eren had been quite busy lately with the research project he was doing with a couple of fellow master’s students, so Jean hadn’t seen much of him lately. Not that he hadn’t been busy himself, what with the piles of midterm papers he had to mark for his classes.

Jean came home one day to find Eren packing an overnight bag with a few sets of clothes and other necessities.

“We’re in the final stages of our project, so I’m gonna stay over at the labs for the next week or so to try and get as much done as I can,” he explained, giving his boyfriend a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll call you when we’re finished our testing, that way you can come down and see what I’ve been working on!”

“Yeah sure, sounds great!” he said with a smile, pleased to see Eren so excited. His last two years of work were finally about to pay off.

It was a quiet few days without Eren, but between their nightly calls and the mounds of grading he had to get done during the day, Jean managed to keep his loneliness at bay. When he finally got the call to come on over, he rushed to shower and get changed, chugged the rest of his coffee and bolted out the door.

Had he been paying more attention to his surroundings as he entered the medical sciences building, he would have heard the whispered rumours of those who passed him, heard them talking of the newest success from the biomedical engineering department. But Jean was focused on his destination, and quickly climbed the steps to the third floor and ran over to knock on the laboratory door.

Jean recognized the tall blond who opened the door as one of Eren’s colleagues, Reiner. The bigger man grinned at him and pulled him inside, refusing to answer Jean’s questions as he was pushed into a small dark room, the door shutting behind him with an ominous click.

The lights suddenly flickered on and Jean spotted Eren sitting up on a nurse’s cot, wearing a simple t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Jean gasped when he finally noticed what was different about his boyfriend: a silver prosthetic leg, attached below his left knee where he’d lost his leg all those years ago.

Eren grinned at him and wiggled the toes of the metal foot as a hello. He barked out a laugh at Jean’s shocked expression, and with deliberate caution, slowly raised himself from the cot to stand on his own two feet.

“Took a while to get the wiring and the programming right, but the nerves in my leg were undamaged so now I can control it just as if I had a real foot,” explained Eren as he took careful steps towards his boyfriend. “Once we’re sure it works 100%, we’ll give it a fake-flesh covering and it’ll hardly be noticeable.”

“Well, you’ll have to make sure they get your skin tone right, or it’ll stick out like a sore thumb,” said Jean with a chuckle, finally getting over the initial shock of seeing Eren with two lower limbs. “How does it feel?”

“ _Amazing_ ,” Eren let out in a rush, his features lit up with happiness. “I can walk again, Jean!”

They shared a quick hug before Eren stepped back, a serious expression on his face.

“Now that I have two legs again, there’s something I have to do, something incredibly important to me,” he said gravely before carefully lowering himself to the floor.

Slowly, he knelt down on one knee, arms going out to help him keep his balance. Jean’s heartrate started to pick up when he noticed the small velvet box that Eren had produced from seemingly nowhere.

“Jean,” Eren began, “I love you. You have long been my rock, my crutch, my happiness. You never gave up on me, on _us_ , even when things took a turn for the worse. There’s nobody else I could imagine _standing_ by my side for the rest of my life.” Jean laughed through the tears that had started to fall. Eren gave him a fond smile, popping open the small box and revealing a golden ring nestled in the red fabric of its interior. “Will you marry me, Jean?”

“Yes! Yes of course I will, _mon amour_ ,” Jean exclaimed, laughing and crying as he dropped to his knees. He gave Eren a crushing hug as the two tried to keep control of their emotions. They eventually separated long enough to give Eren the chance to slip the ring onto Jean’s finger and to produce an identical one from his pocket and let Jean place it on his own. Jean gave Eren one last lingering kiss before standing up.

“You know we’re gonna have to go home and skype the others about this, right?” he said with a smile, already imagining the reactions of both of their families and of their friends.

“Yeah yeah, just help me up, would you? I might have a new leg but I’m still not used to using it… and I don’t think sitting on the floor for so long helped, either.”

Laughing, Jean reached down to pull him up, putting the both of them slightly off balance. He pulled Eren to his chest to prevent him from falling, and kept him there in a firm hug. Eren sighed of happiness, melting into the hug. There was nowhere the two would rather be at that moment than right there, standing in each other’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still taking writing prompts over on tumblr! (shooponthemoon)  
> Doesn't have to be erejean or even snk, just check my fandoms list ;)


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